Standard 1: Teaching for Learning
Candidates are effective teachers who demonstrate knowledge of learners and learning and who model and promote collaborative planning, instruction in multiple literacies, and inquiry-based learning, enabling members of the learning community to become effective users and creators of ideas and information. Candidates design and implement instruction that engages students' interests and develops their ability to inquire, think critically, gain and share knowledge.
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Elements of Standard 1
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Reflection
There is no shortage of stimuli competing for students' attention in today's classrooms. As teachers, it is our job to analyzing student need, and determine the best method to deliver the content to our students. During my coursework and practicum, I was provided with many opportunities to practice analyzing student need. Through these exercises, I have been able to collaborate with other teachers by analyzing student data as well as creating collaborative units. In FRIT 7430, I worked on a technology integration unit with a fourth grade teacher at Gould Elementary. Students were pre-assessed on prior knowledge of Greek Mythology, as well as given a modality survey. Once students learning methods were established, projects were developed in this unit in order to help fill in the gaps in knowledge in order to achieve mastery of a fourth grade common core standard. While this has long been a practice of mine, this particular experience helped push my knowledge in learner analysis in a new way. I had never seen a group of students score so high in the areas of music. This allowed me to push my creativity in a direction I never had to before. Also, during my practicum, I had two more opportunities to focus on teaching for learning. One opportunity came when developing a project with the second grade classes at Gould Elementary. Students were tasked to prepare a short paragraph on a given historical figure and present at PTA as a "living wax museum." Students within second grade had a very wide range of reading abilities, which provided a challenge when developing this unit. Through careful analysis of the data, and by working with the second grade teachers, I was able to work with them throughout their research, not only teaching students how to look for information, but by helping students find information on their given reading level. The second opportunity in my practicum allowed me to focus on lesson development through modes of inquiry. Working with a fifth grade teacher at Gould, I helped develop a flipped lesson with for her class in order to help them look at websites more critically. Students were given a collection of websites to look over before visiting the media center at the end of the week. Students were allowed to look and inquire about the validity of the given websites and try to find the reliable website within the given group. Through observation and inquiry, students realized that determining a websites reliability is much more difficult than just inserting the word into Google. |